[Significance of zinc and sarcopenia in patients undergoing surgery]

Sarcopenia is characterized by muscle mass depletion and decrease in muscle power or physical activity. We evaluated significance of sarcopenia in patients undergoing living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Patients with low skeletal muscle mass (SMM) had significantly worse survival compared with patients with normal/high SMM (p < 0.001). Correlations of preoperative zinc with prealbumin and branched-chain amino acids were significantly positive. While, correlations of zinc with tyrosine and ammonia levels were significantly negative. The low pre-transplant zinc level steeply dropped for 2/3 days after LDLT and subsequently increased back to reach the pre-transplant level around the postoperative day 5, and continued to increase until normalized during 2 weeks. Perioperative nutritional therapy including zinc supplement significantly increased survival in patients with low SMM (p = 0.009).